Copilot for lawyers: which Copilot you have, what it reads, and what it still can't hold

If your practice runs on Outlook, Word and Teams, you already have a Copilot. The questions that matter are which one, what it can read inside your firm's Microsoft 365, who decided that, and what it still misses: what each client told you across the threads and calls nobody wrote down. Here is the answer to each, from Microsoft's own pages.

Short answer: a lawyer can be using any of three Copilots, they read very different things, and the settings behind the work version belong to your firm's administrator, not to you. This is the Microsoft chapter of our guide to AI for lawyers, which covers the wider landscape and bar guidance. Every Microsoft statement here was read on Microsoft's pages on 12 October 2026.

Equerry, which publishes this guide, is a personal assistant for the client side of a practice, not a legal research or drafting tool, and is not affiliated with Microsoft. Nothing here is legal advice: whether client material goes into any tool is for your jurisdiction's rules, your firm's policy and, where it applies, your client. Naming note: Microsoft's documentation now reads, "Microsoft 365 Copilot is now named Microsoft Copilot, and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is now named Microsoft Copilot Chat," while its pricing page still sells the add-on as Microsoft 365 Copilot Business. This page uses each Microsoft page's own name.

Which Copilot do you have? Three answers

Start with how you sign in.

The apps show which you have. Microsoft's overview (1 October 2026) lists three labels: "Copilot Chat (Basic)", no add-on and no Copilot inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint or OneNote; "Microsoft 365 Copilot (Basic)", no add-on but "standard access" to Copilot in those apps; "Microsoft 365 Copilot (Premium)", the add-on. In Copilot Chat, enterprise data protection shows as "a green shield along the top of the user interface next to the New Chat button."

Copilot for legal work: what it reads, and who decides

Microsoft describes the paid version precisely: it "accesses content and context through Microsoft Graph. It can generate responses anchored in your organizational data, such as user documents, emails, calendar, chats, meetings, and contacts." The limit is permissions: "Microsoft Copilot only surfaces organizational data to which individual users have at least view permissions." The training statement: "Prompts, responses, and data accessed through Microsoft Graph aren't used to train foundation LLMs, including those used by Microsoft Copilot." Three things follow for a lawyer.

• The boundary is what you can open, not what you meant to share. A matter folder shared with the whole firm is readable by everyone's Copilot. Oversharing nobody noticed becomes an answer somebody gets.
• The switches are the administrator's. Which agents are allowed, how long activity history is kept, and whether the "connected experiences that analyze your content" are enabled at all (off, and "Microsoft Copilot features won't be available" in the apps) are tenant settings. Work IQ has a switch too ("You can turn Work IQ on or off"); Microsoft's overview does not say who holds it. In a solo practice you are the administrator. In a firm, find out who is.
• Your prompts are kept. "The stored data includes the user's prompt and Copilot's response, including citations," and administrators "can use Content search or Microsoft Purview" to view it. You can delete your own copy (steps below), but "Any content that Copilot helped you with, and that you've saved in your file, won't be removed."

Where Copilot saves a lawyer time, and where it falls short

Microsoft's feature list is a fair map: "Draft, rewrite, and summarize documents" in Word, "Draft emails, summarize threads" in Outlook. In a practice:

• A first draft in Word from your own outline. Open Copilot "on the bottom right corner," describe "topic, audience, tone, format, and length," reference a source by typing "/", select Generate. The outline is yours; the prose is a draft.
• A thread summary in Outlook you then read in full. "Summary by Copilot" at the top of a conversation, with "numbered citations that, when selected, takes you to the corresponding email in the thread." A reading order, not a substitute for reading.
• A recap of a Teams meeting, if the firm transcribes. For Copilot after a meeting ends, "Transcription is required to use Copilot." Whether a client meeting may be recorded at all is for your firm's policy and your jurisdiction's rules; the organiser's setting is below.

It falls short where every general assistant does. Authority: Microsoft says generated responses "aren't guaranteed to be 100% factual." A case name, a quotation or a section number from Copilot is a lead to pull and read, never a citation. Responsibility: Word's help: "You are responsible for deciding whether to keep, revise, or remove Copilot-generated content before sharing your document."

What to paste, and what never to paste: by where the data lives

With ChatGPT or Claude the question is what you paste into a box. With Copilot the box already sits inside your firm's data, so the question is where the data lives and which Copilot is looking. Your firm's policy overrides every line below.

A document in OneDrive or SharePoint

With the add-on, Copilot reads it where it sits, within your permissions; with Copilot Chat you upload it, and "Uploaded files are stored in a user's OneDrive for Business." Either way the real control is the file's sharing: before you ask Copilot about a draft, check who else can open the folder; each of them has a Copilot that can answer from it. Documents under a protective order or a confidentiality agreement get their own decision, under the order's terms and your firm's policy, before any Copilot sees them.

An Outlook thread

"Summary by Copilot" reads the open thread, and Copilot Chat in Outlook, even without the add-on, "can access user data including their emails, calendar, meetings, chats, and limited file content (OneDrive and SharePoint)." A lawyer's mailbox holds other people's confidences on both sides of every matter. The summary earns its place on a forty-message scheduling thread; on a privileged thread, your firm's policy decides, and the summary is still a Copilot answer in your activity history.

A Teams meeting

Copilot in a meeting runs on the transcript, and the transcript is a record. The organiser chooses "Allow Copilot and Facilitator" with the values "During and after the meeting," "Only during the meeting" or "Off," within what the firm's policy allows. Set to Off, "Recording and transcription are also disabled for the meeting." Internal meetings are the comfortable case. Client meetings, and anything with the other side on the call: policy first.

Text you type into the consumer app

Signed in with a personal Microsoft account, you are outside enterprise data protection, and the page you read has to match the app you run. Microsoft's Privacy FAQ for the older Microsoft Copilot app (its own notice: an updated app "is available as of August 18, 2026," and the article "applies only to the older version") said that, unless you opted out, Microsoft "uses data from Bing, MSN, Copilot, and interactions with ads on Microsoft for AI training," excluding work accounts and "Users of Copilot within Microsoft 365 apps with Personal or Family subscriptions." The current pages, read 12 October 2026, say of the updated app: "Prompts, responses, and your file contents when using the Microsoft Copilot app aren't used to train foundation models"; the page for Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps for home, which names Personal, Family, Premium and Pro plans, says the same of those apps. Training is not the only question: the app keeps your chat history and, unless you turn off its Saved memories toggle, remembers "key details and preferences from your conversations." Treat the personal-account app as any consumer chatbot: nothing that identifies a client or a matter.

The settings a lawyer can see, step by step

1. Decide Copilot for each meeting you organise. Microsoft: "This setting is available in the meeting scheduler under Online meeting options > Copilot and other AI." The setting is "Allow Copilot and Facilitator."
2. Delete your Copilot activity history (work account). "Go to My Account > Data and Privacy > Data options and open the Copilot activity history section," select Delete, tick "Microsoft Copilot" in the "Delete Copilot activity history" dialog, select Delete again. It clears every app at once, and "It might take some time."
3. On a personal account, turn off memory; the training switch belongs to the older app. In the updated Microsoft Copilot app: "Open Settings, and then select Personalization," then "Turn off the Saved memories toggle"; "Select Manage next to the Saved memories toggle" leads to "Delete all memories." Microsoft's current privacy-controls page lists no training switch; its activity-history page says prompts, responses and file contents "aren't used to train foundation models." If you still run an un-updated desktop install of the older app, its page says: "In Copilot for Windows or macOS: Select your profile icon, then select Settings > Privacy > Training on conversation activity and Training on voice conversations." and, for memory, "Select your profile icon, then select Memory > Delete all Memory." Microsoft says that article "applies only to the older version of the Microsoft Copilot app."

Copilot prompts for client work, inside Microsoft 365

Each stays inside a document or message you already have open, names no client, and produces something you check line by line. Weighing ChatGPT or Claude instead? Their guides carry their own prompts: ChatGPT for lawyers and Claude for lawyers.

• Word: a defined-terms check on your own draft. Word's Copilot answers questions about the open file; Microsoft's Word help describes a "Chat only" option that answers without changing it. "List every capitalised defined term in this document, the clause where each is defined, and every place a term is used before it is defined, used in lower case, or used but never defined. Change nothing in the document." Then make the fixes yourself.
• Outlook: a one-paragraph cover note for a document you attach. New mail, the Copilot icon, "Draft with Copilot": "Write a one-paragraph cover note, under 90 words, for the attached draft [engagement letter]: what it is, the two things [the reader] needs to do (review it, and return a signed copy by [date]), and that questions are welcome. Plain words, no legal terms." Attach the document yourself; read the note once more before Send.
• Excel: a chronology from dates you typed in. Put the events in a table with Date, Event and Source columns, then: "Sort this table by Date, oldest first, add a column showing the days between each row and the one before, and highlight every row where Source is blank." Sorting, formulas and highlighting are on Microsoft's list of what Copilot in Excel does; the highlighted rows are your to-do list.

What Copilot does not hold: what each client said across email and calls

With the add-on and Work IQ on, Copilot "pulls information automatically" from your firm's Microsoft 365: every thread in your mailbox, every file you can open. The scope is the firm's tenant, not the one matter you had in mind. Without the add-on it reads nothing of yours unless you paste it. Either way, the record that decides matters is often made where Microsoft wasn't: the client's call to your mobile, the forty minutes in your office, the word with opposing counsel on the courthouse steps. "She'll take the lower figure if the confidentiality clause survives." That reaches no tool until you put it somewhere; our practitioner's map of legal assistants asks you to keep it deliberately. Four lines straight after the call keep it with no tool at all; the weak point is finding them four months later.

Where Equerry fits

Equerry is a personal assistant on your iPhone who helps you get things done. For a lawyer that means the client record, not the law and not the firm's document system: it does not research, draft pleadings or review contracts, and it has no connection to Outlook, Teams, SharePoint or any practice-management system. Copilot keeps working inside Microsoft 365; Equerry keeps what each client said, from what you choose to send it.

Equerry has an address of its own at mail.getequerry.app. Copy it on a live client thread, or forward one after the fact; as long as its address stays on the thread, each later reply reaches it too. It never asks for your inbox, and the original stays in your own mailbox. The voice note is recorded in Equerry after the call, transcribed and kept; Equerry neither joins nor records the call itself. Meeting Prep is a Routine you set up; with calendar access, a brief arrives before a client meeting from what you have shared: the latest reply, what is open, what was agreed last time.

The honest limits. Equerry knows only what you send it, plus your calendar if you allow it; it cannot find the email you never forwarded. Anyone on a thread can see its address on the CC line, so forward where that would be awkward. It does not call or text anyone. What you send is processed by the outside providers named on our AI disclosure page. It makes no claim about privilege or any bar rule: whether client material goes into it is the same decision as for Copilot, under your firm's policy and your jurisdiction's guidance; what changes is the scope, thread by thread and note by note, instead of a tenant.

Keep Copilot for the draft in Word and the summary in Outlook; use Equerry for what each client said. It is on the App Store for iPhone and iPad. For the habit itself, see how to keep a record of client calls.

Sources, all read 12 October 2026. Microsoft: Microsoft Copilot Plans and Pricing, AI for Business (Microsoft 365 Copilot Business and bundle prices, the promotion footnote, the 300-user and eligible-plan conditions, the Copilot Chat no-additional-cost line); Microsoft Copilot Plans and Pricing, Enterprise (the Microsoft 365 Copilot enterprise price and the separate-license line); Compare Microsoft 365 Plans and Pricing (Personal, Family and Premium prices and Copilot lines). Microsoft Learn: What is Microsoft Copilot? (dated 1 October 2026: the three in-product labels, in-app features, Work IQ); Data, Privacy, and Security for Microsoft Copilot (dated 9 July 2026: Microsoft Graph, view permissions, training, stored interactions, Purview, connected-experience controls, sensitivity labels, accuracy); Enterprise data protection in Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft Copilot Chat (dated 29 May 2026); Microsoft Copilot Chat Privacy and Protections (dated 18 August 2026: the rename sentence, web grounding, the green shield, uploaded files, logging, Copilot Chat in Outlook); Overview of Microsoft Copilot Chat (dated 9 September 2026) and Frequently asked questions about Microsoft Copilot Chat ("Microsoft Copilot is for personal use"). Microsoft Support: Summarize an email thread with Copilot in Outlook; Draft an email message with Copilot in Outlook; Draft and add content with Copilot in Word; Welcome to Copilot in Word; Get started with Copilot in Excel; Catch up on meetings with Microsoft Copilot in Teams; Delete your Microsoft Copilot activity history (the deletion steps; it also carries the rename sentence); Microsoft Copilot privacy controls and Privacy FAQ for Microsoft Copilot (each states that its information "applies only to the older version of the Microsoft Copilot app": the older training line, the exclusion list, the older menus). The current consumer pages: Microsoft Copilot for individuals: your data, privacy, and responsible AI (the 18 August 2026 update notice); Microsoft Copilot for individuals: your activity history (the "aren't used to train foundation models" sentence for the app); Microsoft Copilot for individuals: your privacy controls and choices (Saved memories, the Settings and Personalization steps); Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps for home: your data and privacy (the Personal, Family, Premium or Pro scope and the training sentence for those apps). Microsoft changes its products, names and pages often; where its current page disagrees with this one, Microsoft's page is right. This guide is general information, not legal advice.

Last updated 2026-10-12.

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